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a bit surprised this hasn't been posted about, but I am looking forward to SC a lot, and there is a new update, too much to cover, but I linked the pages, and covered what I think is a very good topic, and something that I was wondering myself, lifetime insurance

new update which covers a few things, including insurance, as there is a FAQ on their site that tells you exactly what it is and does

One major issue we’ve seen come up time and again in the past week is that of ship insurance. What does it mean, how do you get it, who is eligible and so forth. We’ve put together the following short FAQ document to try to explain the topic:
What is insurance?

Pilots in Star Citizen can purchase insurance policies for their ships, modifications and cargo. This ensures that your ship will be replaced and/or its modifications and cargo will be subsidized should you be destroyed in a fight or accident. As in real life, insurance policies must be maintained: you must pay a regular fee in galactic credits (the in-game currency) or your policy will lapse and you will not receive a payout or a ship replacement when your ship is destroyed.
Will this Insurance cost a lot?

Like in real-life insurance should be a relatively small part of your regular in game expenses which will also include paying landing fees, trade tariffs (if in a system with lots of infrastructure and law and order), fuel (if you don’t collect it yourself from a gas giant), buying cargo to trade, hiring help, making upgrades to your ship or even buying a whole new ship.

Some of the additional policies like upgrade or cargo insurance will be rated based on risk levels. Risk level 1 being the safest systems and risk level 5 being the most dangerous system that is insurable for cargo or upgrades. Any risk level over 5 is un-insurable. A risk 3 policy for cargo will cover you for all cargo losses in a risk 3 system or below. The higher the risk level of the policy the more it will cost. As with the base insurance this will not be crippling financially but instead be a reasonable running cost that relates to the risk / reward profile of the systems flown.
How do I get lifetime insurance?

Anyone who pledged for a copy of Star Citizen before November 26, 2012 automatically has lifetime insurance on their pledge ships; this protects the investment you made in the game in perpetuity. Anyone who pledged for a copy on or after November 26th starts with a finite insurance package for their ship. This can be anywhere from 2 months to 12 months depending on the ship and policy type. Lifetime insurance does not exist for modifications or cargo.
What happens if I don’t have insurance?

Your character will have to buy a new ship with any credits he has, or if he doesn’t have enough credits fly missions for a third party (both NPC and player) until he’s earned enough to buy his own ship again.
Will ships I add to my account have lifetime insurance?

Users who registered and bought at least one ship before November 26, 2012 can purchase additional ships with lifetime insurance for the next twelve months of development. Users who registered on or after November 26, 2012 can purchase additional ships with variable length starter insurance policies ranging from two months to twelve months.
Can I trade my lifetime insurance ship?

Yes. The lifetime insurance will follow the ship hull when it is legally sold or gifted. If the ship is stolen or otherwise captured, the policy will not transfer.
Will my insurance carry over to ships I earn in the finished game?

No, and you cannot transfer insurance policies from one ship to another.
Can I use my insurance as an excuse to simply ram other ships to death knowing I will get my ship back?

You can, but this will be a very bad idea as it is inconvenient and time consuming in getting your replacement ship ready to go again. Additionally there will be an increasing delay in replacing your ship every time you make a claim within a certain period of time.
Can I insure alien or one-off ships?

No. The only exception is the limited number of Vanduul fighters sold through the RSI site during the pledge campaign; these ships do have lifetime insurance included.
What will you do to combat insurance fraud?

A ship cannot be sold without a legitimate hull id code. Claiming on the insurance policy invalidates the hull code on your previous ship, so if it was captured or stolen the new owner will be unable to sell the ship at a regular ship dealer. Additionally if you have claimed on a policy and someone is flying the stolen ship in a well policed system, the hull id will mark it as a stolen ship, the law will be after you and landing privileges will be denied on any lawful planet. You will be able to fly a “hot” ship to the less savory parts of the Star Citizen universe, where you will probably be able to land and may be able to purchase a fake hull id code, but it will take effort and not necessarily be cheap.

Finally the Advocacy takes insurance fraud very seriously. If it can be proven that a player has colluded with another player to defraud the insurance company, that hull’s lifetime insurance will be invalidated and the player may have to pay a large amount of credits to keep their record clean and not be marked as a wanted criminal.

one of my questions running in my head is if I do pledge say for the freelancer, would it come with lifetime insurance if I add it as a pledge upgrade? and it seems as long as I buy it before the remaining year is up, it will, I already got an RSI account, so waiting for the survey, then once I got a bit more funded, get the freelancer as well as my originally pledged Hornet, (but the cutless will still be available for this time too, and that also probably will include the lifetime insurance, so that might be worth getting, instead of the freelancer? but after the year is up that won't be there anymore it seems, but the other limited ships aren't there anymore

still, this is going to be really interesting, and it only covers the hull, nothing else, its also interesting that the cover is attached to the hull so you can gift it, and the cover will still remain, which is also good

they clearly put a lot into this, and to counter fraud, which is also cool

would have been nice mind, if this information had been available early on, but it does mention ingame insurance too, and how that will work, so overall, it certainly was well worth pledging during the KS then after, as pledged ships now come with limited insurance, rather then lifetime, but the money for the game just keeps pouring in,

$6,848,276

so in a year, I think they won't need private investors, as they wanted at least 12 million to make the game, (which the rest would be covered by investors, but not publishers) so really, I think if SC has generated this much so far, then I can easy see it reaching 12 million plus by this time next year

thoughts? but generally, I think the whole insurance thing is a very good thing, and I may get either the freelancer or the cutlass at a later date, as it will also have lifetime insurance, so not sure which to get, but anyway, looking forward to this game now, and with the extra money, this is going to be one fine awesome game

I found the Star Citizen campaign excecution a lot more amateurish then what Josh has shown us so far.

Chris Roberts speaks way way to fast like an overexcited child that never seen a camera and the way their homepage and forum was set up got me thinking of 10 year old games...

Same thing with Elite: Dangerous really, they even launched their KS campaign without a video, showing the same screenshots twice on the main KS page, and the videos added later has not really impressed me either.

Josh on the other hand has set up a modern forum with a nice looking top banner, presented his development blog, screenshots and wallpapers to download. In the videos he speaks professionally and calmly, presenting the game, vision and his resume in a very convincing way.

Even at this early stage the game already looks amazing, and the clarification on the insurance is very welcome, though I wish they had officially posted about that sooner so I could have gotten a better ship with lifetime insurance, my pledge prior to the 26th only has the basic ship.

Lynx wrote: the clarification on the insurance is very welcome, though I wish they had officially posted about that sooner so I could have gotten a better ship with lifetime insurance, my pledge prior to the 26th only has the basic ship.

the basic ship is all i have as well but not because i was unsure of how the insurance would work. i just want willing to shell out $60 for a ship i could pick up in game after a few good runs with a few friends. the insurance on ahigh class ship would be nice no doubts there. but id rather be more careful in game than reach for my credit card irl XD.

If I've rambled and gone off topic im sorry but i tend to be long winded as you might notice if you stumble across my other post XD. thanks for reading.

@Ixos:
In a manner of speaking (game development wise), 1 year is just enough to come out of the pre-production stage, which is exactly where they are now. Making games really is not cheap, and I think Josh is a tad too conservative on the amount of money he needs to survive on while developing LT.

Keep in mind, the crowdfunding for SC was more a demonstration of enthusiasm than anything else. What Chris was asking for, and what he got with the staggering record response, was something he could take to corporate sponsors and say: 'Here! See? This is how much players are starving for a good space sim.'. Armed with our dollars, he can turn on the tap to MAJOR sources of capital.

I thought SWTOR would have been the most expensive? pretty sure it was around 200 million? so that should be the highest, but yeah 100 million for GTA 4 is crazy, and I dont think its all that brilliant, GTA SA is a lot better and still has the largest gameplay area, but yeah making games is expensive, but I really wonder why it is so expensive? licensing would be one reason, especially for GT series, using car names, etc, but yea for GTA, licensing probably would cover a fair amount of the budget, so really, the best thing really is not to real real names, but then of course there is advertising and getting the games to the shops

so there are a few reasons why,

but I think in a digital world and with KS, at least some of those issues can be removed, bringing game development back to manageable levels

The reason why all these games are so expensive to make is that all the content (all buildings, cars, nature, characters, voices, everything) is normally designed manually.

Top games use hundreds of 3d modelling artists and hundreds of actors to do voice overs. To get them all to work together you need dozens of managers and computer equipment + office space for them all. Games take several years to make and they all get paid monthly.

It all adds up. Hiring 500 employees for 3 years will cost you 112.5 million $ (assuming an average salary of $75k per year which isn't far to much for experts having bachelor's degrees and quite a bit of programming/modelling experience).

That's why we should be exited about Josh making a smart script that can generate infinite amounts of content

yeah true, but the thing is, who is really to blame for pushing game costs up? I think publishers have a lot to answer for, back in the day, I read that BG1 cost around 3 million to make, ok things have changed and prices have gone up a lot, but even so, we will be getting a feature rich game project eternity for 4.1 million dollars, expensive yes, but it should probably be as big if not bigger then BG series, plus a 15 level mega dungeon (that gives me the giddys just thinking of how my party of six is going to survive in that nightmarish place and still get to the bottom?)

but I think this is the problem, publishers I think are to partly to blame for the raising costs, to keep game making inside of the elite (not talking about the game with the same name) circle, only those with access to publishers can make games, and we seen a lot of developer studios been shallowed up by the likes of EA, buying up the competition, so we had to pretty much be forced to buy either low cost indie games that while some are good, so might not really be trhat good and gets passed by, Im not saying the indie market is a bad thing, its helped a lot, but its far from been triple A quality, (many won't be able to achieve that)

so really, this is not really helping anyone when games are so expensive, but KS has changed that, its going to bring down the costs of making games, and this is a good thing, and something that is desperately needed, plus the return of the bedroom programmers, which had their heyday in the 90's, now I dont think there are that many about

but I do think KS has done wodners, its given people like Josh, and many others who might not have been able to afford to release games, a real fighting chance to release a game that they wanted, plus with PE, SC, and many others, its proven people will pay a lot to see decent games again, but the other real cost is doing games for consoles, doing patches for consoles cost a lot, at least 40k per patch, so this is another reason, doing games for PC will be a lot less, if PE was to come to consoles, (it won't) but if it was, the cost of making the game would be far higher then 4.1 million, plus it will be digital (with some limited edition box copies) so getting the game out there will be a lot cheaper, and because OE aren't tied to a publisher on this, anything they do make back will be profit direct to them, where by,the profit to go back to the publisher and OE will get the picked clean bones, unless the game sells a lot of copies

it said on THQ forums (and THQ are going to fold soon as well) that to keep the Darksider series going, they need 3 million sales, EA reported that to keep DeadSpace series going, DS3 needs 5 million sales

but then again, publishers have had a major stranglehold on gaming, so EA have made the new C&C game that they are working on, F2P (formerly Generals 2) and announced that people aren't buying as many of their games anymore, and sport games, so they announced that generals 2 will go F2p MP only, so it won't have a sotry or anything, just MP

but I really hate EA, for many reasons, they destroyed many good franchises, many good developer studios and more, I think really KS will be a threat to them, as even console sales have been in a major decline for a long while now, and I don't think the 8 gen consoles will really help unless the publishers get their act together and start release better games, but if they alll keep releasing TPS / FPS games, like COD and BF3 then people will eventfully stop buying them, and from what I seen, COD BO2 which has been using the same engine as the original COD, (7 year old engine) but the game is pretty much the same as alll the other CODs

so KS is turning this around, if KS can help to make games that gamers want to see, and big studios like OE using KS as well as small indie studios and bedroom programmers, then people may start seeing PC gaming as a better alternitve to console games, and really stop paying a lot of money for rehashed sequels all the time, and instead help fund games that they really want to see, helping to bring down the cost of gaming,

while the publisher model probably won't go away, I think unless the publishers change, they will continue to get in more and more trouble, THQ may fold in about 6 months or less, they really are going, if a few more publishers go, the better, EA long with them, but they too much of a mega publisher, but they are feeling the pinch, so anything is possible

but anyway, I will draw this to a close, KS will help to bring us some very good games, games that WE gamers have wanted to see for ages, if KS can do this and help to bring down the cost of gaming at the same time, then all the better

Last edited by matthewfarmery on Wed Nov 28, 2012 7:45 am, edited 1 time in total.

my backed list, ED is at £1 so I can keep a tab on updates, but if nothing really happens, I will cancel it outright, skyjacket (another space sim) did look good, they didn't make it, but are planning on doing another KS, and I hope they make it, shaker got cancelled, if the devs got their act together, do a better pitch video, they might raise what they need

games in the list I'm looking forward too

Grim Dawn (ARPG) been 2 plus years in the making, they did a KS to raise funds, and added 4 new devs to the studio to work full time, plus many part time devs too, this is a one to keep an eye on if you are a ARPG fan, it will be far better then D3, loot will be better, and more, I have alpha access for this too, not sure when the alpha is out mind, probably next year, so hopefully I can find time to help both LT and GD, but looking forward to both

LT (no introduction) coming a very close second, this is going to be a photo finish at this rate

SC I think playing a good space sim will be awesome, but granted there will be a lot of time to pass before its fully ready

PE if it helps to bring back games like BG series, PS:T and others, and remaining a classic at the same time, I can't wait to play it

DFA can't wait to play an adventure game again, nuff said

WL2 going to be another awesome game

after that, I don't know, all good games, but those are the ones I'm really interested at the mo,

and KS will be the future, as they will help to put PC gaming back on the map

Last edited by matthewfarmery on Sat Dec 01, 2012 6:43 am, edited 1 time in total.